Land Reform and Land-Use Changes in the Lower Amazon: Implications for Agricultural Intensification

Land tenure has been considered one of the key factors that define patterns and change in land-use systems. This paper examines the implications of land reform for household decisions regarding patterns of land use, agricultural intensification, and forest conservation. We look at an Amazonian caboclo settlement in the Lower Amazon that had experienced land reform by the end of the 1980s. Results show that defined land tenure is not enough to guarantee agricultural intensification and forest conservation. In fact, several factors working at different scales are affecting land-use change in the region. At the settlement level, privatization of upland forest has led to an overall increase in cultivated land—pasture and annual crops—and increasing deforestation rates. However, at the farm-property level, different systems of agricultural production—intensive, extensive, or abandonment of land—occur according to availability of labor, and capital, and access to different natural resources.